Red
by teaandcharcoalforbreakfast
Summary: Sometimes all you have to do to be friends is find some common ground.


I've learned a lot about Karkat while we've been on the meteor together. He has scars all over, which is why he insists on wearing long sleeves and pants at all times. He gets pissed at the drop of a hat, but just as quickly forgives and moves on. He could sleep through a world war, and has the tiniest, cutest snores when he does. He won't eat shellfish of any kind because he loved his crabdad just that much. He loves human music and always sings when he doesn't think anyone is listening. He also doesn't seem to realize that his voice carries really well. Not that anyone minds. He's got a talent. But the biggest thing I've noticed is that he's painfully ashamed of what he is. He still tries to keep his blood a secret, even though everyone and their paradox twin knows (It's hard when you blush and sob openly during movie night).

Of course, I learned it really early on, before Karkat would come out to watch movies with us, and even before movie night was a thing. We'd both drawn the short straw that day, meaning that we had to cook something resembling a meal for dinner. Neither of us really knew how to cook, so Rose had given us a pretty simple recipe for soup. Long story short, never let an inexperienced troll dice onions unsupervised. I was working on browning the meat when I hear Karkat scream. I looked over, worried he'd chopped off his finger or something.

"No! Shit! Look away!"

"Are you okay?"

"Fucking fine! Just don't look! Don't!"

He was bleeding pretty badly, red dripping from the hand he was trying to cover. I grabbed the first aid kit and then tugged him over to the sink.

"No, Dammit, Dave, what are you doing?!"

"Making sure you don't bleed out all over dinner."

"No, I can!"

"You can hold the fuck still."

He scowled at me, but let me rinse his hand off. It looked like a pretty small cut, so we just wrapped it in a band-aid.

"There? See? No big deal."

"Sure, just- forget what you saw."

"What? You embarrassed you hurt yourself? It happens, man."

"No, my blood. It's- just forget about the color."

"Oh, is this the mutant thing?"

He huffed and looked away.

"It's not a big deal. No one's gonna kill you here."

"I know, but… It's weird. And everyone hates me as it is."

"Come on, none of us are that shallow."

"How the fuck would you know?"

I sighed, rolled my eyes and pulled off my sunglasses.

"Because everyone knows about Rose and almost everyone knows about me too."

"The fuck are you talking about?"

"Come on, you said you made our species. You should know what normal colors for eyes are."

"Huh?"

"Do you guys have albinos on your planet?"

"What?"

"Basically," I put my sunglasses back on, "if you're upset you've got the wrong color, think of us not having any color. There are pigments that give normal people hair and eye colors and Rose and I don't really have that. I mean, that's a simplified explanation, but-"

"So… you're mutants too?"

"You can think of it like that, yeah."

"And your guardians still took you? And the others still befriended you?"

"Well, Bro and Rose's- well I guess _our- _mom were like that too. It runs in families because we don't do that 'culling' shit. But yeah. So don't worry about it."

"Then why do you hide it?"

"I don't. These are prescription glasses. We also have shit vision. Rose wears contacts, but I was so fond of shades that we went with these. I didn't grab my regular glasses before heading into the game, so unless I wanna bump into shit I've gotta use these. But just about everyone else knows."

He looked down at the floor for a moment before looking back at me and smiling. For a minute I wasn't sure if it was an aggressive thing, because _damn _those were a lot of sharp teeth he was showing off and it was making me want to grab my strife deck, and I didn't know much about their body language.

"Thank you," He said then.

And then he hugged me. I stood their awkwardly for a second, shocked that the crab-ass was actually showing affection. But then I hugged him back, not wanting him to get confused and surly again.

After a minute he pulled away, gave me another smile and then went back to chopping. I couldn't help smiling myself as I turned away, as uncool as it was. From then on, even when we fought, there was an unsaid assumption that we were friends no matter what.


End file.
